Steve Jesok’s Journey - From Rockstar to IT Rockstar
Download MP3I was a professional musician before that. What?
Speaker 2:Okay. Bring me back there.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah. No. In the in the nineties, I had played in the band. Like, that was my job for a while. And then that got old, and I I was trying to find something that was not so much just on the weekends and
Speaker 2:a little more regular.
Speaker 1:Like, paid good, but at the time, it was a lot easier than that music is today. But then, yeah, I was kind of looking for something different, went to a temp agency and ended up kind of through Manpower Professional at the time, getting this temp job carting around PCs in this, you know, PC uplift project, swapping them out. And that was kind of how I got my first job in IT was, hey, I'm here to deliver your new computer.
Speaker 2:Cool. So welcome to Diarrhea Assist admin. So the tagline is talk to IT pros to learn who they are and how they got into IT. So I got a special guest here today. His name is Steve Jessick.
Speaker 2:So I I was trying to think when when did I meet you officially? And it might have been, like, on passing because were you there at the was, like, a happy hour or a welcome back party for TC Smug at what was that restaurant?
Speaker 1:Oh, Pittsburgh Blue. Pittsburgh Blue. No. Oh, I didn't go to that.
Speaker 2:Okay. So so I must have met you after then.
Speaker 1:It was it would have been after that. Yep.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I I can't pinpoint remember, but sometime after then. So but I did find something cool about you is that you well, I'm currently the VP of t c smug, and you were the VP of t c smug back in 2012.
Speaker 1:Is that correct?
Speaker 2:October 2011.
Speaker 1:I had to use the way back machine on the Internet to figure this out because I couldn't remember it. So yeah, I went looking through the archives for the Minskov.org was the original name, right? And yeah, sure enough, October 2011, I showed up at a user group meeting. I didn't know anyone from anyone, right? I walked into the room, and there was a lot of people there because I believe Ken and Johan were there, right?
Speaker 1:And this was at the old Microsoft Office. But it was about the same size as the current one when it's full. So it holds, I don't know how many, a hundred some people, but it was full. And they were having elections. And people didn't want to run and no one wanted to be VP.
Speaker 1:A bunch of people wanted to be president. So I just raised my hand blindly. And I think even if you go back, it'll say, The new guy? I'm like, New guy here. Just put me up as new guy.
Speaker 1:I'll run for vice president. That was my platform. I'm the new guy. Wow.
Speaker 2:So so it was, like, literally one of your first couple times. Very first.
Speaker 1:First. Not literally. Not not like one of no. The very first time I showed up, I stepped into the deep end. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:And it's kinda crazy. I mean, you're probably in front of like you like you mentioned, hundreds of people.
Speaker 1:So Yeah. But there's a lot of people there that day. Yeah. No. It was it was pretty wild.
Speaker 1:Everyone turns around, who's this guy?
Speaker 2:Did did you go because, like, somebody introduced you to TC or Minskug at the time? Or how did you end up at Minskug?
Speaker 1:I heard about the local user group. And, you know, honestly, before that, I I worked at IBM for a long time. So, like, my whole story kinda comes from that side of the IT world. And I had changed jobs, and as part of that job change, I went, I stepped into a position where needed to be able to use System Center Configuration Manager. And so then at the time, that was our local system center user group.
Speaker 1:So might as well go see what this thing does, understand it better. Right? And that's where, like, the local user groups are fantastic resource, you know, online forums for that sort of thing where, hey, let me go and see what I don't know, which is probably a lot. And that's that's how I kinda got involved with user groups. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Oh, back in the day, did you also have, like, duties of bringing drinks, getting food set Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah, it was very similar, very similar to how it is today. I was the vice president, so I took care of lining up food and lining up kind of whatever needed to be done on the side. Brian at the time, Brian Mason was the president. I think Brian was president, and I was vice president for two years.
Speaker 1:And then I became president.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Do you remember like what your role as president was or like some of the things you were like most proud of during that time? Like for your transition to president?
Speaker 1:It was really kind of just getting the whole user group started. And then somewhere along in there too, we incorporated the user group. So we went to from being just a group of people randomly meeting, right? Where we had someone paying for food, because at the time we just had the vendors pay for food and bring it in too. It wasn't like it is today where, hey, we have some money in the bank, because we weren't established as a nonprofit.
Speaker 1:And so that's where, I don't even remember which year it was, Nash Pearson and I then went in it was probably 2013 and turned Minskog into a nonprofit IT, you know, club. And that kinda led to everything that happened with MMS and the users of today.
Speaker 2:Do remember if there were any other user groups at the time, like outside of Minskut? Yeah, there were
Speaker 1:other ones. There were lots of other ones. There was Greg's out in Seattle, Down in there was AZ Smug with Mike Terrell. At the time, there were a couple of really huge groups in Texas. I think those have both since, like, sparkled and faded away.
Speaker 1:They're not as prevalent as they were. Obviously, now, especially like within the last five years, there's been a resurgence of like online user groups, right? So, but at the time, there was quite a few local user ones going on yet. I think there was a Charlotte One, One in New York, one in Chicago. There were there were quite a few.
Speaker 2:I I had this crazy idea of, like, I think HC Smug has, like, a coffee mug. I think it would be pretty cool to get, like, some sort of sponsor, like Patch or Recast or two point whoever
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:To to get all the user groups in, a mug, and then, like, have their logos in the bottom. I don't know. Just just little things. I I'm, you know, like, I I find a lot of value from user groups. Like, every everybody has different scenarios that they bring.
Speaker 2:And and I'm maybe I'm like, I've mentioned before, I'm like, maybe I'm just biased. I really enjoy being around other IT pros too.
Speaker 1:So No, you absolutely get a lot out of them, you know? And at the time, back when I first started coming to the system center user groups, was doing a lot of automation with Opalis, which then became system center orchestrator, And so I think my first topic that I spoke on might have even been Orchestrator and the things we were doing with it to automate IT processes where it was at the time. Okay.
Speaker 2:I I'm gonna take it back a little bit. Take me back to February of nineteen ninety nine. I believe that's when you were first starting your job at IBM? Yes.
Speaker 1:Yeah. 1999. It was doing an OS2 to Windows NT migration for in at IBM.
Speaker 2:And how did you end up there? Were you, like, interning before? Were you at an apprenticeship? Like, what kinda what was that time frame to brought you to
Speaker 1:was a musician before that. What? Okay.
Speaker 2:Bring me back there.
Speaker 1:So yeah. No. In the in the nineties, I had played in the band. Like, that was my job for a while. And then that got old, and I I was trying to find something that was not so much just on the weekends and a little more regular.
Speaker 1:Definitely paid good, but at the time, it was a lot easier than that music is today. But then, yeah, I was kind of looking for something different, went to a temp agency and ended up kind of through Manpower Professional at the time, getting this temp job carting around PCs, working this, you know, PC uplift project, whereas swapping them out, and that was kind of how I got my first job in IT was, hey. I'm here to deliver your new computer.
Speaker 2:I I think you have to unravel the music part a little more. I were you were you traveling? How how did this all end up? You know, are you graduating high school, and you're like, I just need to, you know, be the next rock star?
Speaker 1:Everyone wants to be a rock star. Mhmm. I was I was in an original music band. We recorded a couple albums, and I started playing in a basically bar band, cover band full time that they had a full schedule. Like, there was one period where I think I played every day for, like, forty days because we played every night, like, so there was a lot between the two bands.
Speaker 1:Right? And so yeah. And I was I was doing all that. I had a part time job at a music store. Right?
Speaker 1:Like so, you know,
Speaker 2:everyone wanted to be a rock
Speaker 1:star. Right? Like, so why not do it? Give it a try. But yeah.
Speaker 1:No. I played guitar, and we had some songs that we our our original band was really wrecked. It was really like punk rock, strungy kind of music at the time. And then the bar band, we played all sorts of stuff where I played guitar for a set and I played bass for the rest of the night. Truth be told, I still play with the singer in that band is in their little acoustic band we have today.
Speaker 1:And the guitar player in the other band is in that band. And the bass player in that band is in that band. Wow. Wow. When we get together and play, yeah, it's it's people that I've been playing music with now for a long time.
Speaker 1:Right?
Speaker 2:Do do you remember how old you were when you first started playing with that band?
Speaker 1:When I first started playing with a few of those guys, I was probably I was in high school yet. Definitely was in high school. Yeah. I was probably, like, 91. Wow.
Speaker 1:I'm old. Right.
Speaker 2:So so you like see it. You have seen these guys, you know, just evolutionize like yourself, right? Like, you know, like, hey, we were in our twenties. Now we're in our thirties now, right?
Speaker 1:So Yep. Everyone's doing different things now, right? And we still play music for fun because it's fun to do that, right? And then when I got my first, when I started at IBM, I was basically doing different projects, and I finished that computer uplift one, and then they put me on another project. And then the first manager that they put me with at IBM, I started doing, not necessarily help desk support, but, like, level two support.
Speaker 1:He was a English major. Right? He's like, no. No. I wanted to hire you because you're a music you're a music guy.
Speaker 1:I got three other music folks here. They're all fantastic employees. I'm like, alright. Picking things for different reasons. I love it.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Yeah.
Speaker 1:No. And and back at that time too, I mean, going into IT, it didn't always you didn't wasn't required you had a computer agree. Right? There was really more of a trade school mentality about it in a big way, because and you don't see a lot of those schools anymore, because like, you know, ITT and there were a couple of them here in the Twin Cities area, they're gone now, right? Because they really were like these, they almost turned into, you pay X amount of money and they just give you the certificate, right?
Speaker 1:And then, well, are they really giving you the skills or not? I don't know if that was the case, but at the time, you know, back then, twenty five, thirty years ago, it was kind of a trade mentality about it too in a sense where you can go and learn this, you could learn Nobel, like several weeks ago. You could specialize in those things, and then that was your thing, right? And so, yeah, I got into doing PC stuff, and then became a desk side tech. And then I started working OS upgrade projects.
Speaker 1:So we were doing a, at the time, a Windows 2,000 upgrade project. And all these people this was like in the land of sneaker net at the time. Right? Like, you've heard that term, I'm sure, where you gotta run around, put in the disks, kick kick things off, go click these buttons. Right?
Speaker 1:And so then I started making it a little easier by writing little scripts and things that when we put in those disks, then kick off things that would click the buttons for us. So then, you know, all right, instead of us needing 30 people to do that, we needed 10, right? And then did that on that project and then started doing a little bit more here and there and different projects. I got to work on all sorts of fun stuff over the years. But yeah, that was kind of how I got into it, was just kind of, I'm gonna go try this job.
Speaker 1:Sounds like it'd be a great great thing for me to go do.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. And and and it definitely rings to your I think it's blue sky or Twitter bio, like not just another click admin.
Speaker 1:Not just another button clicking admin. You gotta Which clicking people?
Speaker 2:So so migrations back in the day, it like, for instance, today, you can just go to Intune or SCCM and just like, probably just push my upload. Right? Yep. Back in the day, was just literally I'm I'm just trying to understand, like, say you're on Windows one and you want to get to Windows two, you would have to literally have the operating system on a disk or a We
Speaker 1:were dragging around Ghostcast and ImageCast servers at the time that we would put on the floors, and then we'd run around and boot the devices to the server, which would then start downloading, right, this image. And then after that was done, then we'd do a bunch of things, right, to join it to the domain and then to kick off app installs and then run some scripts for this. And then at some point, you'd have some form of SMS or Tivoli takeover, right? But it was very, very manual to have that change be done at the time.
Speaker 2:And during that time, is that when you started playing around or learning a little bit more about, like, SMS at the time, I believe, the quote?
Speaker 1:Well, at that time, I probably started playing around more with, like, the crazy things that we make fun of now, like auto IT, right, because we're just clicking buttons, and all that thing would do is click buttons and, like, bring this to the foreground, start this process. So I played around with that a lot. I did a lot of actual automation with Perl scripts at the time. So running Perl on Windows, and probably a lot of that was based on the fact that I was working for IBM. Right?
Speaker 1:So a lot of lot of hurt and things like that going on with scripts and stuff in Tivoli.
Speaker 2:What what is Perl scripts? I this is my first time ever hearing about it. Perl's scripting language.
Speaker 1:It's it's another scripting language that you can use. At the time, like, Perl scripts were used on web servers. So, like, the I did some amount of web work at the time where, you know, learning CSS and Perl scripts and different things like that to do you build the pages using the scripts. And so I I learned Perl partially to do some stuff with web work and then also to do stuff with Windows automation just because that was something that we had that did it was a little more powerful than just a command file at the time. Like, batch files are batch files.
Speaker 1:Don't get me wrong, those tools are cool and they still work. Oh my god, they still work. But, you know, it was it was a little more extensible and you could do more with it. Right? Like, pull in data, you could parse the data.
Speaker 1:Right? Not not do this four string thing that was this crazy, like, woah. That's a hell of a shell script.
Speaker 2:And so and so then you're, you know, you're going on your career. When did you start to, maybe specialize or, you know, just really delve into the systems management portion?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So myself and a friend were working in a small, you know, asset management organization, and they needed to be able to do things a little quicker. And we started to build scripts to manage all these devices. And so we kind of, in a way, built our own little system for deploying software updates, software to the devices, scanning for different settings, you know? And so we did a lot of this at the time, like with PSExec, VB Script, because we'd use VB Script to collect data off the devices, put that into XML files, the XML files went to a server, We'd use the XML data, then render a page where we could see all the values.
Speaker 1:So it was pretty crude.
Speaker 2:It was really effective. It did
Speaker 1:the job, right, like what they asked us to do. And every time they needed something done, we were able to get it done. Okay, we'll have it done in like an hour. We'll give you the report. And they'd go to another team that was doing something with a larger system, and they'd be like, Oh, we'll go talk to the team.
Speaker 1:We'll get it scheduled for tonight, and we'll get you the data tomorrow. And so we really were kind of driven to find agile ways of coming coming up with how we could execute these things quickly, just in time to get it done. So then that way, hey, if there was a zero day because those happened then too, right, we're all patched. Meanwhile, on the call, everyone else is still planning, right, on how they're gonna go and get the patches deployed with other systems. But, yeah, he and I built a lot of cool little tools like that for both upgrades and and all sorts of things.
Speaker 2:Do you do you do you guys still work together? Is he gone on in to a different place?
Speaker 1:He's gone on. He's a he's a architect somewhere else now.
Speaker 2:Okay. Okay. So I'm sure I'm sure he remembers those days. If he listens to this, he's like, man, those are the those are some good days.
Speaker 1:So,
Speaker 2:tell me about Novell and Zenworks when you when you think about that. When you think about that, I I'm going keep pushing this. Alright. I I I don't know anything about it, and and I love to learn about this.
Speaker 1:You need to track down someone by the name of Jeff Price. Jeff Price. Here in the Twin Cities last I knew. And you wanna say, hey, Jeff. I want you to give me your perspective on Novell.
Speaker 1:That's that's what you need to do.
Speaker 2:Jeff Price.
Speaker 1:Jeff Price. Yep.
Speaker 2:Alright. I'm gonna find Jeff Price, and I'm gonna message him. So I'm I'll get to the history of this.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And my experience with it at the time was we were using Novell for file servers because it was just it was fast. It was really fast. It was really performant, so it did better, bigger file structures, larger amounts of data. That that was one of the things it was really good at.
Speaker 1:And so all of our all of our network storage, right, that you'd access your network drives were just Novell servers in our different offices at the time. So yeah. Are you has changed.
Speaker 2:Do you do you remember kind of, like, it going through its cycle of life?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Mhmm. Yeah. Because eventually, we did end up putting in Windows servers and then moved out even on from some of those. Right?
Speaker 1:Now we're using NAS Mhmm. Appliances for that sort of stuff instead because they're even more performant. So
Speaker 2:Absolutely. So tell me a little bit about your your running. Are you are you still running? I know I know when I met you, you I Oh, boy. Would see you running all the time.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I need to, need to be running all the time. I ran four days last week. It really hurt. I'm getting back into it because summer's here. Right?
Speaker 1:I I'd love to go out and run-in the cold, but it's just it's just hard to do. But then once it gets to, like, 50 degrees, alright. I'll get back at it, get running. It's a good way to stay healthy if you can run. Otherwise, just go walk.
Speaker 1:Like, honestly, going for going for a hour long walk gets the blood flowing too. It's you know? The important point is we sit in our desks, whether we're at home or in the office. Oh, well, you have to walk around a little bit. Yeah.
Speaker 1:But I mean, like, I grew up, like I mentioned, like I was an electrician, like, we're always moving around doing stuff, right? It's not like you're sitting at a desk. That's like you're doing a trade. You're moving around and stuff to add. It's yeah.
Speaker 1:It's to me, it's just super important to just help help me stay healthy and
Speaker 2:Absolutely. The chair. Yeah. Yeah. And there's there's been studies too.
Speaker 2:I mean, it says like, even if you do twenty minutes during like a, like during the workday, you mean your blood, your blood flow to your brain is really well. Something like that, right? I'm not a neurologist. Yep.
Speaker 1:I try to get at least thirty minutes. If I can go longer, I'll go longer, but thirty minutes or a good solid walk, right? And I'm I'm happy.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And and I I'm sure, especially you, you've been working from home for a long time. So it's you know, you've picked up a lot of these good habits, you know, so especially like you can easily get stuck at your desk, you know. I I I I'm I've done it right now. You're you're just stuck at your desk all day because you're busy, but it is
Speaker 1:important to Oh, yeah. You get working on something and rolling and you kinda get in the flow, and then all of a sudden, you're like, oh, I need to step away and go do this or go do that. And then you come back to it, right, and, like, in another few minutes, right, you're in the flow again, you're rolling with it, and then you're like, Oh, it's 10:30. What just happened? I need to put this away and go to bed.
Speaker 1:No. And so that's where it's Finding ways to limit that though is super important. When I changed jobs five, six years ago now, one of the things I we had we had to check out our access. So I would use when my access expired as my counter, like Nice. It's done.
Speaker 1:Nope. I'm sorry. I can't do any point more. I need to walk away now. Right?
Speaker 1:And and that worked really well for me for a long time. Yeah. You have to find ways to help limit that because otherwise, you it can get out of hand. Absolutely. Work life balance.
Speaker 2:And and another activity that I saw that you participated in is golf. Are you an avid golfer? Are you here and
Speaker 1:there golfer? Well, I don't know where you're getting this information from, but I'd really like to know. I do golf.
Speaker 2:Was on Twitter. It was on Twitter.
Speaker 1:It it's fun. Golfing is fun. It's you know, when you get out and get some exercise, roll around. Right? The course have you know?
Speaker 1:I'll walk it or I'll take a cart, but yeah. No. Well, I'll go golfing with friends in the summer on weekends here and there. Always always a good time.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I I only bring it up because I've I've been golfing recently, and I'm like, you know what? Let me let me ask Steve if he wants to go golfing. So we should.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I mean, that's Absolutely. That'd be
Speaker 2:a good, like, user group meetup or a not a meetup, but just something to toss out.
Speaker 1:User group golf tournament. Do a best ball with sets of four. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Oh, that'd be good. That would be a good one. Hey. That's another great activity. Right?
Speaker 2:Like, getting people involved. Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1:Could Absolutely.
Speaker 2:You know, just, what's it called? Pick people with different or, like, place people with different people that might not know.
Speaker 1:So Yeah. That's it would be a great way to get to know people.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. So I'm I'm gonna write that down. This that's that'd be a good one to
Speaker 1:to pitch. Awesome. I like it.
Speaker 2:Have see if see if somebody can help us sponsor it. Speaking of sponsoring
Speaker 1:Maybe love golf. Someone's gonna sponsor it.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah. Speaking of sponsoring, you you you are a part of or have always been somewhat associated with the two pint brewery tour at MMS. What what what got you how did you start that? Ever since I've known you, you've you've helped out with that.
Speaker 1:Fred Bainbridge used to do the brewery tour for MMS. Mhmm. And it started off with just, I think, some people hopping in taxis and going to a couple places or maybe taking the train. And then Two Pines sponsored it and I volunteered to set it up, right, and go a bunch of different places. And so we took people to two, three, four breweries.
Speaker 1:Four was a bad idea, I'll tell you that much. Three was probably a bad idea and four was worse. That might be a better way of putting it. But yeah, so now it's now we try and keep it a little more, you know, low key and go somewhere where people can hang out for a while, right, and get to know everyone else that's there. It's nice because inevitably, it seems like half, in a minimum half the people and this year especially, when I said who's a first timer on the bus, it seemed like 65% of the people put their hand in the air, and it's like, wow.
Speaker 1:That's that's a lot of new folks. So it's it's really cool to meet people and hang out, you know, at the beginning of MMS and and kinda set the stage for the week. And
Speaker 2:Yeah. No. I I I think it's a great idea. It's I I mean, the location this year was amazing. Oudapill's.
Speaker 1:Oh,
Speaker 2:yeah. Was beautiful. Like, they had pizza. Yeah. Great beverages.
Speaker 2:So
Speaker 1:Yeah. We went to Wabasha for many years. That's it's a great place too. But this year, you know, things with scheduling didn't quite work out at first, and then so we we picked a different location. But, yeah, Utopilts was a great choice.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Absolutely. And and to that, when when did you first start speaking at MMS or any other, like, user groups too?
Speaker 1:So it was probably, like, 2012. If you go over to the way back machine, it'll say Steve Steve Jacek. It's spelled wrong, J A. Jasek. And this is why you can't find any info on me.
Speaker 1:Everyone's spelling my name wrong, right? So probably have 17 aliases I don't know about. But yeah, no, I spoke about Orchestrator Automation at one of our first user groups. Then I've pretty much spoke at every MMS. I think there's only a couple of the fall ones that I've missed.
Speaker 1:Like I missed the first one because I think I was in at Microsoft the week before. And so I just I didn't want to be away for two weeks. But as far as Minneapolis ones, I've spoken at almost every single one. And then I've I've tried to make the fall ones. Last year was my parents' fiftieth wedding anniversary.
Speaker 1:So you know staying good standing with the family. My own key friends. Steve, you should go to Florida. No. No.
Speaker 1:All the dad would be mad. Right? So I inevitably follow the good voice and Wednesday at home.
Speaker 2:Do do you remember who you first spoke with or some of the people?
Speaker 1:Oh, let's see. Someone that I spoke with quite a bit long ago that actually were talking about potentially speaking together again, either this fall or even next May at MMS, Nash Pearson. Oh. Nash Nash used to be involved heavily in the user group. So we spoke at MMS.
Speaker 1:He and I did like an all day workshop at IT Dev one year on updating all the things. So all the things you should be doing to make sure all the devices in your organization are up to date. So, yeah, Nash Nash and I spoke to together quite a bit. And then lots of lots of other people.
Speaker 2:Do do you remember who was like, was it you that you were just like, I'm just gonna go speak at MMS, or was somebody like, hey. You should go try it out.
Speaker 1:I had been doing some speaking beforehand where, you know, I did it at the user group a little bit. And so when we started MMS, it was like, oh, no. I can I can do some things? I can cover a few topics. Like, can talk about automation stuff.
Speaker 1:So I did some things on PowerShell and automation, talked through those thing those sorts of things. Feels like I've been doing BitLocker now for, like, six years.
Speaker 2:I I I think that's kind of the the preface that I knew you of. I'm like the BitLocker guy. That that's The BitLocker guy. Yeah.
Speaker 1:At one point, I joked to Mark that we should get E shirts that just say the BitLocker bros. Yep. Right? And then I just have to extend it. So whoever else spoke with me, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1:You're getting a BitLocker Bro t shirt because that's that's what we do. And that's what we talk about.
Speaker 2:I mean, yeah, it's it's such an important element, though. I mean, you know, the encryption of devices. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. And and I I did see you worked at a couple big banks as well.
Speaker 2:Did you, like, when you were transferring over there or going over there, working over there, did you, you probably had a really good surface of, like, best practices and stuff at IBM. Did I'm sure that really, like, followed through at the next couple places as well.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah. Yeah. No. Absolutely. Like, I learned a lot of good practices at IBM, right, because IBM was a consultant, we're on projects, like we had to follow things to the rule, like you had to understand how to say no, right?
Speaker 1:Like, can you do this? No, it's not in our scope of work, I'm so sorry, right? Like, what do you mean? No. I'm sorry.
Speaker 1:That's not what we're here for. Right? Like, go talk to this person. They'll help you. Right?
Speaker 1:Like but, yeah, there was a lot of best practices around just, like, general things like documentation, all these simple things that people forget, documentation, naming standards, you know, like keep it simple, like not making things overly complex. Because as soon as you make things overly complex and you start tying those overly complex things together, it does turn into the Rube Goldberg machine, right, of IT and no one wants that. So, yeah, there was there was a lot of lot of great simple things that I learned and took away from IBM.
Speaker 2:Outside of like the technical stuff, what are some other things that like you learned along the way? Maybe, like, a maybe soft skills or anything like that? Like, would you say, like, oh, this is a really good trait that I learned?
Speaker 1:Soft skills. Soft skills. Soft skills.
Speaker 2:So
Speaker 1:when when back long years ago, I don't even remember this. So this was at IBM, but like soft skills and talking to people is important, right? And just, you know, having a flow. So when you're talking, you're having a conversation, and you're working the user through it, right? But at the same point, you have to be listening, right?
Speaker 1:Because everyone's different. And so you're trying to communicate a message, it's not only important how you're saying it, you have to be listening to how they're receiving it, right? Just because there's people that would be upset with, Hey, this thing isn't working. And so, yeah, we're not supposed to be psychologists, but you have to talk them down through trying to talk them through something. Right?
Speaker 1:And so really learning how to have those soft skills to talk to customers was important then. Someone I sat next to would make jokes that, Were you a radio DJ? You'd make a great I'm like, No. And, you know, I never made fun of people. I never said, hey, hey, Bob, you said, 37 times on that call.
Speaker 1:I was counting. Right? Like, there's simple things like that, you know? And honestly, I still do those things today because it's it's some of those things are just we all do them all the time, but paying attention to how we talk when we're talking and communicating, it's it's it is really super important just because that's ultimately how people perceive you. Right?
Speaker 1:Like, that's where those soft skills come into play because, you know, communication is is really key there. That was that's huge.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Especially, I I think like empathy, right? It's because especially like some people can think that computers and and just technology in general is very complex. You know, it's like they're already they're already a little intimidated. So like Oh, yeah.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. You can kinda be that voice of, like, you know, calmness for them.
Speaker 1:So Practice radical empathy. Yeah. You know? And and then those sorts of skills also come into play, like, on a team. Right?
Speaker 1:Mhmm. So as I started to step into different leadership roles and working and training techs and working with techs, like, it's important to kinda get to the point of, alright, which pieces you know of this and which pieces do you need to learn, right? Because I can maybe help you learn some of it, or I can give you resources to learn those things, right? And then as you're working through things on projects too, like, have to brainstorm, all right, I want all the good and all the bad, like any ideas, really, because even these things that we think, oh, that was a ridiculous I idea at the end of the day. Well, that was the best one because maybe it was the simplest or something.
Speaker 1:Right? So it's yeah. All of those soft skills are important at all levels of IT.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Is there anything in technology that excites you recently or that you're looking forward to? It could be AI. It could be, you know, something in device management. You know, what what is something that maybe that you think about that you're like, oh, this is this is going to be interesting.
Speaker 1:Obviously, AI is gonna be interesting. Right? It does so much. Like, anyone anyone that would hear that and say that that's not the case is crazy. Right?
Speaker 1:One of the reasons I probably stayed in IT as long as I have is the fact it's constantly changing, right? It's not like you go and you learn these 30 things, right? And those are the 30 things, and they never change, and then you work at that job right, for forty years and then you retire, right? No one does that in IT. No.
Speaker 1:No. Because you probably learn those 40 things every four years at a minimum or every week because it changes so fast, right? And so that's really where, you know, I've always done a lot of stuff with automation, so being able to apply things different ways there. And then like with a lot of the ways that different aspects of AI have come into all the tools we use, like, you know, whether it's things in the Microsoft stack or even in third party tools, the next thing, get other tools that I have exposure to. Those have prompts where you can ask it questions to give you the data too.
Speaker 1:Like Tanium does that, where you can ask it a question and it'll give you the data too. So I mean, a lot of those things have been coming slowly for a long time now, where being able to query the data, yeah, it's important to understand how you get it still, just because if you take that and use it somewhere else, now understanding that is important, but that's where you can certainly use a prompt to skip a lot of the busy work and the playing around time to get to, hey, here's functionally what I wanted to do. Know? Add in all the comments. Okay.
Speaker 1:How's this look? That's that's awesome. I don't write write all the help documentation. Like, okay. Those are busy things we don't have to do.
Speaker 1:Even scaffolding out the script, so it does 90% of that for you. Right? It's alright. This is wrong. I can see that this needs to be changed or this isn't real and fix this.
Speaker 1:Because, yeah, it doesn't always go the full distance. Right? But it it gets rid of a lot of the busy work where I'm not spending three hours writing the script. I'm spending five to ten minutes getting to a point where I've got a functional thing that I can start unit testing, validating, hey, yes, this is right, or these functions are wrong.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And it's to me, it's definitely helped, like, kind of speed up the process in some, like say say you're scripting. Right? And you're
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:You have you have a base of your script, and you're like, hey. Can you check if I have any, like, you know, syntax errors or, like, just Yeah. And and it's really good at helping you explain some of it too. So Yeah. And I'll I'll pivot to it a little bit too.
Speaker 2:I have you, like you know, you being a music person, do you see it do you see it in music at all? Like, do you see it Yes. Like, Tell me about it.
Speaker 1:Absolutely hate it. So if you took every song you've ever heard and you put them together into one song, and then you asked AI to create songs off of that, it's all gonna be common changes. Right? There's there's not unique new things in there, which drives me nuts. Like, okay.
Speaker 1:Alright. That's I can sometimes tell that's an AI song. Right? Mhmm. And it's like one of these days, some AI song is gonna show up on some charting thing on Spotify and the world's I'm gonna be pissed.
Speaker 1:But the world may not be, right? Because, you know, what people hear in those songs, you know, it's it's the same a lot of the same elements and hooks. I mean, the underlying structure of how music works has a flow. I mean, it's it is very methodical and mathematical. So that's where AI in those spaces yeah.
Speaker 1:Here. Here's my lyrics. Write me this country song and create the words. Alright. Friend of mine, Sam, we had this song he wrote years ago.
Speaker 1:Right? It's like, oh, hey, take the lyrics from this song and make it sound this way. Alright. Now that's the way we play the damn song. What the hell is going on?
Speaker 1:Okay. Right? So but there in that that point again, we used it as a jumping off point. So we said, take this, make it sound this way, and then we took that, and then we made that our own. Right?
Speaker 1:So that's where it absolutely can help with music where it may not be the thing that's creating the entire thing, but it could get it could be the building blocks of the song, actually. Nice.
Speaker 2:Do you I I think there was a I don't know if you're if you remember this, but there was, like, a Drake song or a Biggie song that was AI created, and it was, like I think it was in the chop charts of Spotify or something. But, like like, that's kinda crazy to think that, you know, AI has that capability, but it's, like, it's not the creator getting the, like, royalties or, like, actual credit for it. So Yep. It it could probably get a little messy there. You know?
Speaker 2:Well, yeah.
Speaker 1:And that's that's really weird too. Like, if you take that thing and then you turn it into something else, alright. Did it create it, or did you just tell it to create something based on a sound that you then took? Because you told it to do that. You're creating that, right, in a sense.
Speaker 1:So yeah. You know? I don't know. I don't know. It's not quite Westworld yet, but damn it.
Speaker 2:Yeah. No. It's it's it's interesting. I I I think of some ways that, like, maybe it can be helpful is, like I was talking to somebody. They're like, you know, maybe if there is a nanny bot or something, like, you know, you have both working professionals, and I don't know.
Speaker 2:I I still need to unravel it.
Speaker 1:I've seen some pretty terrifying movies about that sort of thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. So it it's it's it's a lot to unravel and, you know, especially from a from a technical perspective and, you know, from a security vulnerability, like, it's yeah.
Speaker 1:It's No. Things happen slowly over time, though. Right? If you go back thirty years even and say, hey, we're gonna take your money and digitize all of it, so you never actually have to touch cash, coins anymore. Right?
Speaker 1:People have been like, no. What are you talking about? That's crazy. Right? What do we do today?
Speaker 1:Bloop, bloop, bloop. We just tap and go. Right? Like, it's all digitized. It just happens slowly over time, and it becomes the new norm.
Speaker 1:Right? So all those things you just mentioned, once things get to a stage, it'll just become the new norm slowly over time. Right? I may never see it in my lifetime. Right?
Speaker 1:Maybe you will, maybe my kids will, Who knows? You know? And maybe it doesn't even get to that stage before any of us have a chance to see because maybe it takes longer because it is very complicated. There have to be guardrails.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:There's all those all the reasons why we're like, well, I don't know. That kind of frightens me. Right? Like, you have to build those those things in. Right?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. We we can't be the only concerned ones. People probably making it. You know?
Speaker 1:Responsible AI. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yes. Yes. You know, so so in that terms, you know, you're you're you're you have kids who are gonna, you know, go on to be, you know, whatever they wanna do. What what advice do you give to like the next generation of IT professionals? The the next era, like, somebody who wants to get into IT?
Speaker 1:Do what you wanna do and do what you love. Mhmm. If you don't love it, don't do it. Go do what you love. Because in life, if you go and you pick a job and it is not what you love, you are going to go to something that you hate for eight hours a day.
Speaker 1:Right? And at the end of the day at the end of the week, at the end of the year, those eight hours a day equals more time than you may spend with your family in that day, month, year. Right? And if you hate everything about that, that is a miserable life. Right?
Speaker 1:So out of the gate, IT or not, do something that you love. It has to be fun. It has to be not work. Like, you know, I love learning new things, helping people solve problems. Right?
Speaker 1:And then figuring out the next best way to do something. Right? But that's where if I didn't love those things, it could be very like, oh, this is so much stress. Right? Like, that's where Is it stressful?
Speaker 1:It can be at times, but I enjoy the challenge of it, right? And so really that's where Kind of back to, I love the fact it doesn't change. That's where my advice would be is, if you love change and you love challenges and you think you're gonna love IT, chase it. If you don't love any of that and that's what you went to school for, that's okay. Go do something that you think you'll love instead and chase that.
Speaker 1:And if you find that you don't, don't keep doing it for God's sakes.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Right? And try the next thing because everyone needs time to find their space in life. Like, not like we all just pick the right thing out of the gate. Some people do, and they're lucky. Some people pick something, and they stick with it, and they're miserable.
Speaker 1:Right? So that's really where my advice is, do what you love. Right?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. No. Yeah. And it's true. Right?
Speaker 2:Like, I I didn't I didn't think about it that way of, like, you know, you portion up the time in the whole year. You spend more time doing your work. Yeah. You know, with like doing that more time than you spend with your family. So, that's that's like super important thing.
Speaker 1:So You gotta love the people you work with. You gotta love your job. It's, like, a key part.
Speaker 2:Right? Absolutely. Yeah. And so in, you know, in in that I'll move it to the next section. You know, if you could if you could share the stage with anybody, you know, with the band or whoever, who would it be?
Speaker 1:Wow. Let's see. Dead or alive. Alright. Let's see.
Speaker 1:I really love I really I really love you two. I do. I do. I love you two. I love the Foo Fighters.
Speaker 1:I'd love I'd love I'd love to just play with the Foo Fighters and throw it out for a few few songs. Fun. Right? Like, I'd I'd love to play with The Who, like, back with in the seventies, back when they were big and large, like, that's massive. Like, queen.
Speaker 1:Like, queen played, like, for, like, 350,000 people in Brazil once. Like, just a sea of people you could not imagine. Right? Like, I've had a few opportunities where I've gotten to play where it's like, all you can see is people in the light, right, at night. And it's like, hey.
Speaker 1:Where are all these what are these people doing here? And, alright. This is fun, but, you know, this is wild. Right? But, like, a huge like, some of the concerts that happened in the seventies would just be a trip to see today.
Speaker 1:I don't know if we would ever see that today just because I don't know that people go out and chase that as much as they did then. Right? Because if you wanted to see music and you wanted to see bands, it was all in real life then. Right? It's not on a device, you can just do Right?
Speaker 1:Like, so different reason to go chase things then. But that's where yeah. I'd probably have to say Queen would have to go on the list. Yeah. I I could probably keep naming bands and talk about this another ninety minutes.
Speaker 1:We should change his time.
Speaker 2:Well, I'll I'll kinda keep to it. You you mentioned that you have played for, a huge group, like, where you saw it was at night and you saw a bunch of heads. Do you remember, like, kind of the count?
Speaker 1:I have no idea what the count was. So here here in Minnesota in the summer, like, every little town has a city festival. Right? And then in that city festival, like, they will use that as a way for their local, like, lions club or sportsman's club or whatever club to, like they'll have a beer garden to sell, you know, beer or they'll do pull tabs on top of, like Mhmm. However else they wanna try and make money with having this festival.
Speaker 1:And in this specific case, they ran out of beer at, like, ten, ten thirty. And it was in August, and it was warm. But it was crazy because there were other towns having similar things go on, but they were, like, 30 miles that way, and we could see the thunderstorms that way with all the lightning going on. While all this is going on, right, there's this thunderstorm way off in the distance, which it was just it was crazy. It was lots of fun and surreal.
Speaker 1:It was it was cool. Oh, man.
Speaker 2:And and I'll I'll continue I'll I because I I enjoy hearing this. And what what was, like, the most memorable concert that you had been to, like, participated? Not, like, sang at or Yep. Performed at, but, like, where you were an attendee. You're like, man, this is a freaking awesome concert.
Speaker 1:Gosh. Let's see. Concerts. There's gonna be a lot of dead air here. Well, when I was younger, I would see concerts of people that came through the Central Minnesota area.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. Right? And that was fun. The first, like, concert where I was kinda like, wow, was probably Soundgarden in 1991. That's that was probably the first one.
Speaker 1:Like, the craziest performance I ever got to see was probably George Burns doing his farewell tour when he was a hundred and one. And and he went he, like, did this little tour where he kinda did his bit he'd done all along. He came out with this like two foot long cigar smoking it like, hey, you know, telling his whole life story of the he did right. Right. You know?
Speaker 1:Say good night, Gracie. You know? It was cool just because like from a performer standpoint, it's not music, granted, but he had such a following. Everyone saw him in so many other places. So that was a really cool thing to see in person just because, you know, there's there's times where you miss seeing things.
Speaker 1:Like, I got to see the Foo Fighters play many, many, many times with, you know, Taylor Hawkins, but and he's I'll never see that again. I saw him play with a different drummer last summer. Are they loud and sound good? Yeah. I don't know if it's the same thing though.
Speaker 1:Right? Because everybody has their own personality about them, and that's where seeing musicians where another good example. I went and saw Snow Patrol recently, a band that's been on forever. Also went and saw a Scottish band now I'm gonna forget their name. They opened for Oasis in the in late nineties.
Speaker 1:Same original members, though, and it was at the small venue, and it sounded just as incredible, like, as they sounded back then when they sounded huge. Same with Snow Patrol. Like, same, you know, same original members that have been in the band for the last twenty three years that everyone knows of. But it still sounds the same. Then when you go see a band and it's like, oh, it's the original bass player, you're like, okay, this is not quite the same.
Speaker 1:It's not the same vibe. Sounds like the songs. But it it turns into, like, almost a cover band thing, right, where we didn't write them, so we're playing our interpretation of them. Right? And so really, that's where I'd have to say, anytime I've gotten to see a full band and it's the full set of original members, it's it's almost generally always been great.
Speaker 1:Unless those original members have some serious problems where they can't work. But at any rate, like yeah. No, that's there's yeah. There's lots of them.
Speaker 2:Oh, man. Let's see.
Speaker 1:I thought we're gonna talk about IT.
Speaker 2:It's the diary of this assignment. You know, it's a closed it's a closed book. You know, there's or open book. You know, I
Speaker 1:It's true. So It's true. As as Matt Zaskey said as when I first met him. So, Steve, tell me, what exactly is it that you do here? I see you around this place.
Speaker 2:Did you did you meet Matt Zaskey a while back too? It was several years ago.
Speaker 1:And it was actually at an MMS. Like, I took him to lunch. Like, I see you around the user group. Like, I see you around here. Like, so what exactly is it you do again?
Speaker 1:Well, you know, I've been I've been around this this group for a while. Like, when we when MMS first started, I was treasurer. Right? So everyone knew me because I was the person that was reimbursing them for their airfare. Right?
Speaker 1:And so everyone knew Steve. Steve sending me the checks. Yeah. Hey, buddy. What's up?
Speaker 1:Right?
Speaker 2:You had to be they they had to be on your good side.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Every everyone everyone loves a person that gives them the check. Right? No. So you know?
Speaker 1:So that was, you know, I was more involved in the conference back then, right, with with that aspect. I I still help doing social stuff and where I can with other things. You know, it's again, it's a great thing to be a part of and get to see other people and and meet other folks and talk about how to solve this problem or hey, I've heard about this. You have something to do with this. Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1:That's pretty much my thing. They just took it and said it was theirs. I'm like, really? I have no idea. But if if you don't if you're not there to have those conversations with people, right, it's you'd never get the context.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Absolutely. Man. Well, I'll I'll end it here. Thanks.
Speaker 2:Thanks. I'll I'll stop it. Let's see. Stop.
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